January 2019 Update

Link for Recent Photos Dear Friends, Family and Greater Support Community, We've found a few minutes to send you greetings and Christmas wishes. It's been hard: the myriad activities have piled upon each other, as they do this time of year, but in life-giving and fulfilling ways, so we're grateful for all we've been able to do. Especially, we are thankful for the visitors who have come to spend time with us. In November, we were blessed to have Dan's mom Bonnie and family friend Anet here for a couple weeks. They got to attend all of our various performances, Jacob’s dance recital, Kathryn’s Baroque Christmas concert, and Dan’s musical. It was great to have their loving support. Then we had Kathryn's sister Elizabeth and her family here for their first summer Christmas! We were so happy to have family to spend the holiday time with, and had a joyous Christmas day together even providing special acapella music singing Oh, Beautiful Star of Bethlehem for the packed out Christmas morning worship service at Somerset West United Church. Yes, apparently many people still go to church on Christmas day here in South Africa! While they were here, we also enjoyed showing them around to see some of our favorite places, and wrapped up their visit with a trip together along the famed “Garden Route”, SA’s south-eastern highway which parallels the Indian Ocean. We stayed in a beautiful house on a private game farm, and spent time in the Tsitsikamma National Park kayaking on the Storms River and zip-lining in the forest canopy. Kathryn and the Browns also did a day safari in Addo Elephant Park. It was a trip we’ll all remember for a long time. SADRA Work As we were working at wrapping up the year, circumstances allowed the long-awaited Manenberg Community Leaders Conflict Training to happen. Unlike other communities where we've trained leaders, this workshop involved leaders in conflict with one another over issues stemming back many years. For them to agree to come together was just the beginning. A friend of Oscar’s from the area helped tremendously with the facilitation, and to make a long story short, a week of hard work resulted in hugs and pledges to work together differently. Youth shared their visions for peace, and mourning mothers shared their daily pain in a room now willing to listen. It was transforming for all of us involved, and a huge positive step to end the work year. We will have several follow-up events with this group in 2019, but it’s a tremendous cornerstone. In our annual review, we summarised SADRA’s work: we’ve helped train 344 people, about half of which are youth, equally male and female, in conflict transformation – whether that be peer mediation, community leadership, or conflict within the church. We have worked in ten different geographical communities, and in six secondary schools. We’ve also intervened in local area conflicts and our election roundtables have been well attended and now picked up by a partnership with a European donor and the Electoral Commission. Personal Activities We also ended the year with a musical “bang” – Dan starred as Buffalo Bill in our local theatre’s production of “Annie Get Your Gun,” a rewarding and fun experience. Kathryn directed a local choir and orchestra in two sold-out performances of Baroque Christmas music featuring Vivaldi’s “Gloria,” including one as a fundraiser for SADRA. Even the boys joined in singing, and the audiences were very impressed. We continue to build these relationships, and hope to connect local folks to SADRA as part of our last year. We now start our fourth and final year in South Africa. The boys begin Years 10 and 12, and are thinking about next steps in the US. They would love to attend the MCUSA Youth Convention this summer in Kansas City, so we’re hoping to find a way to make that work financially, especially as that could also facilitate their being able to visit some college campuses. Kathryn finished 2018 at a conference in Stellenbosch on Reparation, Reconciliation and Historical Trauma and is wondering how to continue this work in the US when we come back. It seems the work we’ve been doing here could be helpful in many ways back home – if you have any ideas around this please be in touch. Our life and work here continue to feel meaningful and busy. We are grateful for the holiday break and having family to share time with. It is always a joy to show off this beautiful place to loved ones! Thank you for your many prayers and generous gifts that uplift and sustain us, through the trials and the celebrations. May 2019 be a year of great happiness for you and yours. Gratefully, Dan & Kathryn

A prayer to share from our friends at the Volmoed Centre, Hermanus.

October Update

Link for Recent Photos

Dear friends and family,

How October flies! Hard to keep up with the passage of time. We hope all is well with you, and that you’re moving peacefully into fall – we’ve survived winter and had some replenishing rain, so are happily looking forward to summer. The boys have started their last term of the year, and we’re excitedly awaiting my sister and her family visiting us for Christmas!

Work

We’ve had several trainings and work trips since we last wrote, and rather than run through them all, I thought you might enjoy reading a more in-depth reflection from a training for church leaders we did in Durban at the end of August, the first of its kind in that province, so very new material which was received enthusiastically.

The good energy, creative questions and honest reflection by this group made our conflict analysis and mediation training an especially rewarding time. From the opening session on understanding and analysing conflict, pastors were excited to be learning such relevant skills. Unpacking concepts like  that we each need to recognize our own reaction to conflict, as well as understanding and valuing the ways others react, was just the start of their transformation. We heard comments every day like, “This is exactly what I need to know to work with a current conflict situation,” and “This training is dealing with what we all need to be talking about.”

One of those topics was racial tension, a very tangible reality for many in the room, and a growing concern in the KwaZulu Natal province. Our director, Oscar Siwali, feels racism has not been honestly talked about since the end of apartheid, and that racial tension is growing in anticipation of next year’s national election. “Part of what we need to do is educate whites on what it is to be African.” Oscar explained his personal observation, that whites don’t have a space to engage and process their own pain, of which they have plenty. Coming from a traditional Xhosa community in Eastern Cape himself, Oscar reminded these primarily Zulu pastors that most of them had grown up with more present supportive, communal structures to help process pain.

A Few Thoughts

I have been reflecting a lot on this topic recently, at these conflict trainings I do with Oscar, in racism awareness workshops, justice conferences, and even the recent Anabaptist Network in South Africa (ANiSA) conference. “Why are whites not better at loving?” was the resounding question in my head from that gathering of 40 South Africans of different colors and backgrounds. It seems we are not very good at loving ourselves, in our own communities, or loving the Other, even though the Bible we imposed around the world says we are to do just that. The whites that held power in South Africa largely came from a Dutch/Germanic background and have a legacy of trauma from immigration and isolation, coupled with cultures that don’t allow emotional processing and have high levels of damaging patriarchy. English-speaking whites have their own historic ghosts, and that stiff-upper lip culture with the need to act as if one is always right has not done any favors. I’m not saying one culture is innately better or healthier than another, but when looking at the larger picture, our dominating spirit, our wounds and the trauma we deny, and our disconnect with community and caring for Others… well, there’s a reason ubuntu sounds too good to be true – there’s a lot we can learn from it.

I agreed with Oscar’s point – the whites of South Africa have been and are now very broken, and yet can’t see it or admit it in most (any?) spaces. Oscar described being African with an isiXhosa saying “When your neighbour is hungry, you give him your cow so he can milk it, and he milks it, but while looking over his shoulder as he knows some day you will come to take it back.” Emphasizing his point, he went on. “This is what we need to teach white people – you cannot just drive your big car when your neighbour is hungry. Capitalism has failed us, and we need to find ourselves as Africans.”   He challenged these church leaders to share this strong sense of community and the strengths they have with their neighbouring whites. “The government is not going to do this, so the church must take on this role of reconciling the nation.”

Our participants accepted this call and applied themselves through the week to learn the skills of mediation and community building. We coached them through the mediation process, pointing out how important things like identity and dignity are in assisting resolution. In our model, mediation is a needs/interest-based approach to conflict, and this requires a different way of thinking than an advice-giving pastor or arbiter.

ANiSA

I was going to say more about the ANiSA conference – sometimes we wonder why the term Anabaptist is carried around and hung on certain things – couldn’t there be a new theological term instead of reviving this dusty old European word – we can be social-justice-pacifist-activists without needing another title, right? Well, the Anabaptist Network in South Africa has been doing a lot of intentional work figuring out who they are and what they want their power-under response to be, especially through the coordination of Mziwandile (Mzi) Nkutha. Dan and I learned a lot at their gathering last month, and I especially liked this introduction from a young attending scholar: “I’ve been trying to figure out who I am - my father is Xhosa, my mother is Zulu, our neighbors when I was growing up were Sotho, my friends were all Tswanas, and then in school I did English and Afrikaans - so what IS my identity? Mzi told me Anabaptism could help me find my identity, and invited me to this conference, and so I came.” Walter Maqoma.

Our work at peace-building puts a lot of weight on relationships. We are grateful for the connections we’ve had throughout our few years here, but have felt that gratitude anew during these recent events. Thank you for your support of the work towards a more peaceful world, and always for your words and prayers.

Gratefully,
Kathryn, for the Smith Derksens